


For the Team

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-10
Updated: 2011-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 11:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bad rationalizations and an even worse road trip.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For the Team

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted June 2004.

For the Team  
By Candle Beck

Hotel Room #656

There’s a painting of boats on the wall, the ocean mild blue, the birds as white as cotton. It’s dim, unobtrusive, hanging slightly askew above the headboard of the bed.

What are we doing in St. Louis? What are we doing on the north side of Chicago?

Get your head on straight, kid. Get back in the game.

Under the chair by the dresser, there's a pair of boxers that aren't mine. Mulder comes in with grass in his hair, snorts at the cartoons on the television and says, "So, what the fuck is up with you not being able to locate your curveball?"

I shrug, because there's no real answer to that. I've got the same arm I've always had. The same strange and inviolate clarity of vision. I think my heart's the same. I'm pretty sure.

Mulder rolls his eyes, says, "Fuck it," and tosses me a miniature bottle of whiskey he got on the plane. I spin the bottle between my fingers like a drummer. Mulder's loose and unengaged on the bed, his hands behind his head, and we might have made it to Texas while I wasn't paying attention.

I draw back and I don’t think I can stand only seeing the ocean in pictures for much longer.

Mulder, he said to me, he said, “Look, you see this?” and he touched his fingertips to my left wrist, where my birthmark is, poking out of my sleeve. “This is a sign. God’s touched your left hand, He’s blessed it. Here’s the proof.”

Where were we when he said that to me?

Flight Path 27B

Forty thousand feet over some flat part of the country, and there are icicled splinters of frost on the thick plastic windows. I’m looking for cracks to start appearing, I’m trying not to fall asleep.

Mulder’s playing cards with Scotty and J.D. He’s talking quietly to Macha and Young, scribbling things down in his notebook. He’s on one of the in-flight phones and every few minutes he laughs.

Chavvy’s got a broken hand but he’s still traveling with the team. He’s in back, where it’s quieter, writing slow postcards with his left hand, drawing each letter. He shows us pictures of his brother’s new baby, a tiny red-faced thing swaddled in a powder blue blanket, just three days ago christened Eric Cesar after his famous uncle. Chavvy doesn’t smile so much anymore, so we’ve stopped expecting it from him. It knocks me off-balance, to see him without a grin on his face.

I don’t know. This road trip doesn’t really seem like the kind of thing I’m going to recover from that easily.

When everybody else is asleep, when everybody’s eyes are on us, Mulder comes to sit by me, pulls my headphones off to whisper in my ear, his voice low and uneven, “What do you say, man? How are we gonna make it through this time?” His hand’s on my shoulder, his thumb brushing my neck. He tilts his head and his hair touches my temple.

I came up and he came up and that was five years ago. You should have seen him back then. You should have seen me.

Coffeeshop #425

The waitress has a nametag reading Bonnie, and I tell her that that's my sister's name. She smiles, her eyes soft, and brings me a piece of cherry pie, leaning closer than necessary to tell me with a wink, "It's on the house, little brother."

Mulder watches her swish away and he's about to say something incredibly inappropriate, but I'm thinking about the taste of coffee from someone else's mouth, and I'm watching Mulder's hand distractedly tearing a paper napkin into little pieces, ragged white flags.

I ask Mulder if we've gotten out of the Midwest yet, but I don't think he hears me.

Once, I called my dad and said, "Something's wrong," and he came and fixed it for me. My dad, you know, he used to tell me I was as good at this game as anyone he’d ever seen.

Taxicab #893

And Mulder’s hand is on my side, where it doesn’t belong. I’m squirming away, staring out the window. The streetlights tick past like counting off seconds, disintegrating and edged yellow. Mulder’s hand slithers under my shirt, scratching at my stomach, and I try to push him away. “Fuckin’ quit it,” I tell him under my breath, sidling a nervous glance his way and he grins at me because he’s drunk enough to want me again and nobody’s ever been able to turn him down.

The cab driver turns his head just a bit to catch a look at us in the rearview mirror, and I blush, duck my eyes down. Mulder’s hand stills, but when the driver’s gaze flicks back to the road, his fingers stutter and he draws his thumb carefully along the hook of my lowest rib. I breathe out, put my hand on top of his, the smooth material of my shirt all that keeps us apart.

His fingertips are rapping on the line of my sternum, one two three four, his thumb a slash of heat, pressed motionless high on my chest.

One. Two. Three. Four.

Jesus.

Local Bar #766

Fucking tired of going to fucking dive bars with these same fucking guys.

My mom keeps telling me she sees me swearing on television. Keeps saying, “Your grandma watches too, Barry, is that really what you want her to see?” I don’t tell her that when I’m pitching like I’m pitching right now, the only words I can think of are the ones that shouldn’t be said in front of a national audience.

Because motherfucker, man.

There’s some kind of bad alt-country on the speakers, muffled and crackling like something heard through shattered glass. This has all become so goddamn predictable. Water rings on the table, long tears in the slippery vinyl seats of the booth, clouds of dirty mattress stuffing bleeding out.

We’re drinking fast, showing off. Hudson can throw back shots of anything without a grimace, he whoops and bangs the wall with his fist. I wonder where he learned that. My throat’s on fire and Mulder is talking about how we should all get motorcycles.

Motorcycles, what the fuck. Who’s he trying to impress?

Byrnes has just realized that Jermaine has the same initials as Jack Daniels, and he can’t stop giggling about it. Now Jermaine can’t stop giggling either, and he throws a straw at his fellow outfielder, stammering, “Shut up, fool, shut up.”

This team is lousy with guys named Eric and guys named Mark.

Trains keep going by, sirens twisting up and down the alleys. Mulder kicks my leg under the table, so I kick him back. I’m sick to death of this shit, I swear to God I am.

Late-night Intersection #1098

The neon sign’s blue. It’s green and it’s pink and when I’m not looking, it’s fantastically red like Polaroid eyes. Across the street there’s a building of gray brick, a pale marble church, a splintered wooden tenement, shadow-abandoned and I’m thinking about arson, I’m thinking about cigarettes left burning in trashcans, charcoal and smoke drifting into the hole in the elbow of my coat.

Under foreign city trees, the skin at Mulder’s shoulder smells like soap and cotton, green summer leaves. This is what he’s like when he first wakes up. And the subway cars rattle loosely on the elevated tracks because I think this is still Chicago, and he pulls me out of the streetlight, into the darkness at the corners.

He smiles at me and we’re in the middle of the street, halfway down the alley where it’s tar-black and broken concrete crunches under my feet. He leans against a lamppost, says, “You shouldn’t have cut your hair so short.”

The traffic light is blinking red, these weird slits of color in the hollows of his throat. The wind in the trees sounds like a car coming from way far off. I keep waiting for headlights to slice around the corner and pin one of us down. Mulder pretends like we’ve got nothing to hide, and at some point he became better than me at everything that matters.

Yeah, we’ve got shit to hide. His palm flat on the back of my neck, his teeth raking across the skinny tendons on the underside of my wrist, his hand closing tensely in my too-short hair. His arms wrapped around my chest from behind, so tight I can't breathe. Mulder grinning against my mouth.

Trust me, I wouldn’t be doing any of this if I had another choice.

Hotel Room #659

Mulder’s asleep. He’s got his T-shirt wrapped around his forearm; he’s still wearing his watch. There’s a blue sock on his stomach, but I’m not sure which of ours it is.

You don’t know. You don’t know shit.

Two months ago, there was silvery grass-colored rain in Oakland and the skyscrapers gleamed under the moon. I don’t remember what we were doing on the sidewalk that late, that early, but we were on the sidewalk and smudgy daylight was stalking over the eastern hills. Mulder curled one hand over my shoulder, touched my hip with the other, fingertips gentle on the bone.

I didn’t know what he was doing, tightened my hand around his wrist. He had light rain in his hair, misted across his face. “And . . . what might be going on right now?”

Mulder grinned and said, “We’re not doing so well,” as he ran his thumb over my collarbone, something liquid warm unraveling low in my stomach.

I nodded, and pretty soon Mulder wouldn’t be touching me anymore and I wouldn’t be so confused. “Yeah.” He meant the team. He had to mean the team.

Mulder lifted his hand, brushed his knuckles across my cheek. “You with your fucking eyes.”

Then he leaned forward, pushing me back, pulling me forward, and not a second after he kissed me, I snapped my head away, snapped, “What the fuck, man?”

He didn’t let me go. Pressed his face against my neck and his arm was around my waist. “Don’t you see, we’ll be better now, don’t you get it?”

And I . . . I fucking believed him.

Not that he was altogether wrong. He’s been the hottest pitcher in the league ever since. So I guess it worked.

For him.

But he’s the best pitcher in the league right now and he’s asleep in my bed and we’re only a game out and last year at this time we were nine back.

We need him. The team needs him to be as good as he’s been.

And fuck what it’s done to me, because Mulder pitching the way he’s pitching is more important than me pitching the way I’ve been pitching.

Mulder’s asleep in my bed and when I slide my hand curiously down his bare chest, he murmurs and dreamily pushes my arm, urging my hand down farther. He does this asleep, he does this awake. This I’ve come to expect.

It’s for the team. So it’s worth it. Swear to God, it’s worth it.

Dugout #2368

I know it’s Anaheim because this disastrous road trip is finally almost over. I know it’s Anaheim because Mulder only ever looks like that when he’s destroying a division rival.

God, look at him. Maybe he’s never been as good as this.

He pitches a complete game, he ruffles my hair when he comes into the dugout after the sixth. I don’t want to feel his hands on me anymore, but if I stop letting him, I think we’ll start losing again.

We need him. Fuck it. I need him. Fuck it fuck it fuck it. I need him.

It doesn’t matter, we’re going home. I’m starting tomorrow and we’re going home.

I don’t care. I lose tomorrow, I lose every start for the rest of the season, I don’t fucking care. Mulder will be good enough for both of us.

Please, Christ, just get me home.

THE END


End file.
